So, there’s this whole sex minigame scandal going on, with GTA:SA including a risque minigame that can be unlocked via an Action Replay. Hillary Clinton’s having some sort of inquiry, Leland Yee is causing a ruckus, and predictably, Jack Thompson’s talking crap about the industry again.

So… what?

Here’s a minigame that is maybe at *worst* R-rated content, that was locked away by Rockstar, in such a way that you have to purchase another product that is used to modify variables during the execution of the game code to get it to work.

Who’s responsible? Why?

IMO, Rockstar made a mistake – they should have scrubbed the minigame from the disc. However, personally, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the minigame was originally intended to ship on the disc, not locked out, as the reward for finishing the “girlfriend” quests. I’d suspect at some point, the producers got cold feet, and decided to submit the game to the ESRB with that content removed, as for a videogame, that sort of thing would probably garner it an AO, which is about as commercially suicidal as an X.

Given that that probably happened, if the scenario I imagine played out, sometime after Alpha, actually *stripping* the code from the game would likely have been riskier than simply locking it out, and removing access to it. Less chance of introducing bugs, and by alpha/beta, most game companies start putting on the “risk-averse” hats, and the smaller a change can be made to accomodate the design, the better.

As a result, I suspect that the sex minigame was simply bypassed in the script that controlled the girlfriend quests, and Rockstar simply left it at that. If you couldn’t access it in the released build, what did it matter whether it was physically on the disc or not?

So… basically Rockstar created something, removed it from the game, but left it on the disc, inaccessible, because they didn’t think they’d get a suitable rating from the ESRB had they included it. That’s my take on the situation from Rockstar’s view – the most likely scenario, IMO.

I don’t believe it was a publicity stunt – I genuinely don’t. I think they’ve *very* savvy about marketing over there, but I don’t think this was done as a stunt – I think it was simply their original intention that they didn’t follow through on because they thought it was too much.

So, is the hacker to blame? Not really, I think, though I couldn’t say for sure whether legally, he was in the right – I suspect according to the EULA, he violated that – but not in a way that would make him say, culpable for the controversy.

I think the people to blame, genuinely, are the people who felt this required publicizing. Had no national outlet picked it up, it would have been a weird footnote on an otherwise truly astonishing game. But instead, you’ve got opportunists like Hillary Clinton and Jack Thompson jumping on the wagon of, “Won’t Someone Please Think of the Children!??!!?(tm),” and as a result, this has gotten an extreme amount of publicity, a black eye for the industry, and has raised questions about federal regulation of the industry, and some notion that the ESRB should be responsible for rating *inaccessible* content on a game disc. Should Action Replay be held responsible? As much as Rockstar, IMO. I hate that company’s existance – a bunch of worthless fuckers promoting a worthless fucking product, but since someone’s buying it, I’m apparently not quite right on that count.

But I think that the fundamental problem is the game-illiteracy and inane opportunism among the people in power – the notion that a Senator could hold an inquiry on something like this, while the Downing Street memo goes without press, or the Plame investigation is going on is patently stupid – the minigame isn’t accessible in the game’s commercially released form. That’s it.

If anything, I’d suspect this will really hurt Action Replay, and PC gaming in the long run, as to prevent something like this from occuring in the future, one of the easiest things to do is going to be to put that company out of business, and not release on an open platform like the PC.

Holy cow. If you get the chance to watch the Daily Show from tonight, watch it. Jon Stewart completely goes to town on Bernard Goldberg, and it’s a joy to behold. Awesome, awesome stuff.

What’s the best way to fight terrorism?
Promoting democracy
Military action
Tighter security

Lovely. The three options you have are Republican party-line options. Nowhere is “better foreign policy,” which is fundamentally part of the root of why terrorism happens. “Promoting democracy” is basically nation building, military action won’t do jack shit against decentralized terrorists, and tighter security will never be tight enough to protect everyone from everything. Nice. So our only options are to bow to our Republican masters, and accept their worldview, as CNN has, as the only option.

Assholes.

grass pollen. Man. That was *brutal*. Basically, spent the whole day with swollen eyes, a runny nose, and sneezing constantly. My eyes couldn’t focus, I could barely stay awake, and basically spent the better part of the day just wanting to lie down and die.

Fortunately, Ei-Nyung was able to leave a little early, and we got home and got some sushi from Geta (she was also nice enough to go pick up dinner). Tossed in Medal of Honor: European Assault – a huge step up for the series, to be quite honest. Not a real mindblowing game, necessarily, and the squad AI is frustratingly dumb – running out into open clearings, etc. in the middle of firefights, in a game that really requires the judicious use of cover. Still – all in all, a pretty fun first level, which was all I got to before feeling like crap made me quit. Also got Destroy All Humans! from a coworker who’s got a contact at THQ. I now owe him a favor, or $20, but we’ll see. Probably give that game a whirl this weekend.

Spent part of the evening cleaning up the living room, which was almost unlivable. Not really sure what I ended up throwing out, but it was a reasonable amount of crapulence. And then killed an hour watching Top Gear, which is now (hallelujah!) broadcast after Mythbusters on Discovery. They’re basically re-editing last year’s segments into a new series, but hell, I’m just glad to have it on TV – hopefully more exposure means that put it on more, and start airing it simultaneously in the US. I kinda doubt that, because a lot of the segments are very British – Stars in a Reasonably Priced Car, for instance, often has people I’ve never heard of – and the “news” is always very local. So, alas – I doubt that’ll make it on TV in the US. But still, glad to see it.

Hm. Not much else – work’s crazy-assed hectic right now, and we’ve essentially only got a week ’till everything has to be functionally at “alpha” which gives me a week to do two objects, and finish both the food effects and social mode. That’ll be “fun.”

w00t.

Walking from Nob Hill Foods to EA started an allergic reaction that has pretty much incapacitated me for the latter half of the day. I’m almost incapable of coherent thought, and basically, have been sneezing, have a pounding headache, am almost completely unable to focus, both mentally and physically, and am basically useless today. Whee.

Well, so we ended up largely moving into the new room today – at least, the first iteration of the move. Basically trying to remove clutter from the common area, and use the room in a relatively efficient manner.

In the new room:

* My computer, with screen, printer, mouse, keyboard, speakers, on the desk I inherited from my grandparents.

* Ei-Nyung’s computer, hooked up as a server, and accessible through my computer via a client of some sort.

* My Alesis Quadrasynth – if I turn around from the computer desk, it’s right there. There’s just enough space that it doesn’t feel cramped at all.

* In the corner, the Roland MC-303 (a sort of crappy analog synth emulator/drum machine), the Alesis Wedge (a desktop reverb unit), the Toshiba 20″ TV Ei-Nyung gave me for my birthday a couple years ago, my Dreamcast, and my PS2.

* A stack of PS2 games in a DVD tower.

* The Concept 2 erg I got off Craislist’s free listings (it’s got a funky clutch in the flywheel which needs work, but most of the time works ok, and if you know what you’re doing, you can tell when it’s going to slip – still – potentially hazardous).

* The Total Gym Pro I got from EA’s Want Ads system for $20

* My guitar and bass, as well as Ei-Nyung’s two acoustic guitars

* In the closet, three longboxes and one shortbox of comic books (I’ve got two longboxes still at my parents’, which I’ll be moving over shortly), and Ei-Nyung’s wedding dress (for next year).

Wackiness. It all fit reasonably easily, and there’s even room in the middle for a chair of some sort, on which to play games.

I also reorganized one of the hallway closets, which freed up enough space to get our cleaning supplies stored in the closet, which is a nice change of pace from just having them pressed up against the wall. Ei-Nyung also found a bag of her sentimental-type stuff from some time ago. The remaining boxes could use a pretty thorough going-over, but it’s in a much better state than it was.

Whee. Long day ‘o cleaning, and frankly, the rest of the house currently looks much worse for it. Still, had to be done, and much left to do.

… they invariably get worse.

Two things bring that to mind:

1.) The roof leak in the back of the house has gotten … different. The roofing company came out, fixed some stuff that was messed up so that it looks much better. However, they inadvertently appear to have created a new leak, that showed up while we were gone. In our bedroom, the walls are stained slightly, where the fire breaks are. Looks like water came in, but it didn’t go out. Gotta call those guys tomorrow morning, and have them come take a look.

2.) We’re moving into the newly finished spare room – it’s gonna have music stuff, Ei-Nyung’s computer, and workout equipment, as well as possibly having the smaller TV, to give people something to watch/listen to while exercising. As a result, the *entire house* is a mess. The desks downstairs are all moving, the upstairs has exercise equipment (like the Concept 2 I got from Craigslist for a whopping $0) all over, and basically, the entire house looks like a complete disaster. This isn’t really *new* – it’s always been pretty chaotic – but it’s really bad right now. So, we’re working to fix it (I’m taking a break from that writing this) but it’s quite the uphill battle. Still – we’ll see how it shakes out.

Fun. Two days off at home, and both spent on “home improvement” type stuff. Gotta love it.

Whoo. Home after a week on the road – went to Philly, attended a wedding, ate at Morimoto’s, hung out a bit, went to Atlanta to visit her family, and now, am finally home. It’s nice to be back. Gardened a bit today, which was fulfilling. Happy Birthday to Ei-Nyung!

well. That was a crazy-assed day at work. A day full of meetings, and a day full of work, more or less. A couple of the meetings were cancelled, which is probably the only way I actually managed to finish some of the crap I had to do. I ended up essentially gambling that a change I’d really like to go through goes through – in the process of fixing up some other stuff, I essentially implemented a change that hasn’t been 100% authorized yet. I figured that the chances are high enough that I’m not likely to need to re-implement the code I tore out, and I could get ahead by doing this while making other bugfixes as well. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, or I’ll have about five more hours of work on Monday… 😛

I ended up being so … focused, in the morning, that by mid-afternoon, by brain was totally shot – things I should have been on top of, I wasn’t, and I worry at times that on the bits I do fall down on, that people think I’m an idiot – I’ve been doing a crapload of work, and for the most part, it’s going pretty well – but some of the details impact other people’s work, and towards the end of the week, I know I held up at least two people on stuff I hadn’t thought out fully. Alas.

Still, all in all, I’m a touch ahead of the game, so I’ll hope that things continue in that vein. I think I’m gonna give homemade ravioli another shot tomorrow. We’ll see.

Fridge emptied, except for things like condiments that are better kept. Those get moved upstairs, and tomorrow, the fridge gets defrosted. Tomorrow, because it might rain tonight, and I don’t want to risk having it out in the rain. If the coils in the rear get wet, they’ll rust. Still, one step closer. The title of the last post still sadly reflects my feeling that I do a reasonable number of things ok, but virtually nothing “well” – I can draw, sort of – I can play a couple instruments competantly, I think I’m pretty good at what I do professionally, and I can cook decently, given the time to do so. But I’ve never, ever been “exceptional” at anything, even when I devoted myself almost entirely to it. I drew constantly while growing up, and still was never able to really get things down onto the page that I felt were good. Probably in part due to a lack of training, though certainly not due to a lack of practice.

Swimming, too – I devoted myself to that fiercely – not as fiercely as some – but that’s in part because of the same sort of lack of focus and singleminded dedication that causes this inability to really *succeed* at most things. I guess it’s in some measure, an inability to concentrate on one thing for the extended period of time needed to really master something. If you can get 95% of the way there with modest effort, and you need 98% of the way there to be great, and 99-100% to be extraordinary, I think I can consistently get to 96%, in things that I’m somewhat interested in, and maybe even 97%, with things that I’m passionately interested in. But that 1% that’s missing, I find myself systematically unable to accomplish.

Whether I don’t try at all, or I devote myself as much as I can to it, I can’t really ever seem to bridge that gap. I dunno – is that what an egotistical slacker would say? Maybe – sort of sounds like it. Ah, I’d be great, if only…

I suppose in some sense, it really is a cop-out, and it is a sort of ego-driven thing – I’d be good, if only – though I know that the “if only” is a failing or a lack of something *in me* and not some circumstance of the outside world. If I knew what I wanted, and was really, genuinely willing to devote myself to it 100%, I fear that I would still be at best ok, and never extraordinary. Very few people ever are extraordinary, I suppose – maybe it’s that my grandfather trule was extraordinary, and my father is damn close, if not there already. He’s a wacky guy, my dad – sometimes, I think he’s a bit of a nut, other times, I’m astounded at the vast wealth of knowledge and wisdom he possesses. My mom, even, has some extraordinary talents – she’s maniacally devoted to things she’s interested in, is a great cook, and has a very keen eye for quality and taste.

So, maybe I figure in some respect, I’ll just never measure up, so if I presume that there’s something in the way of me ever achieving anything really extraordinary, it’ll be much easier to just say, well, “if only…”

If that’s the case, then my attitude should change. Why be afraid that I’ll never measure up? Certainly, I won’t – I’ll never be, at 29, a match for my dad, who’s been around the block many more times than me. I’m not likely to form my own entire field of research, like my grandfather, but that’s not exactly something that happens every day regardless. All I can be is the best I can be – and if I’m going to sit here whinging about how I’m not already great … well. That’s pretty stupid. 🙂

I always thought that I’d never want to go back to school – that I could teach myself anything I wanted to know. Maybe that’s true, but that’s not really the *point*. I need the structure, and I need the time blocked out to devote to learning – to improving whatever it is that I’d like to want to improve. Maybe that’s part of the path. Who knows?

Hm. Interesting, how this “thinking aloud” thing works. Ha! I bet I sound like a crazed, egomanical wanker. (reads post) … haha! Indeed. Well… let’s see what happens next.